Socialism, like democracy, is an attitude of
mind. In a socialist society it is the socialist attitude of
mind, and not the rigid adherence to a standard political
pattern, which is needed to ensure that the people care for each
other's welfare.

The purpose of this paper is to examine that attitude.
It is
not intended to define the institutions which may be required to
embody it in a modern society.

In the individual, as in the society, it is
an attitude of mind which distinguishes the socialist from the
non-socialist. It has nothing to do with the possession or
non-possession of wealth. Destitute people can be potential
capitalists--exploiters of their fellow human beings. A
millionaire can equally be a socialist; he may value his wealth
only because it can be used in the service of his fellow men.
But the man who uses wealth for the purpose of dominating any of
his fellows is a capitalist. So is the man who would if he
could!

I have said that a millionaire can be a good
socialist. But a socialist millionaire is a rare phenomenon.
Indeed he is almost a contradiction in terms. The appearance of
millionaires in any society is no proof of its affluence; they
can be produced by very poor countries like Tanganyika just as
well as by rich countries like the United States of America. For
it is not efficiency of production, nor the amount of wealth in
a country, which makes millionaires; it is the uneven
distribution of what is produced. The basic difference between a
socialist society and a capitalist society does not lie in their
methods of producing wealth, but in the way that wealth is
distributed. While, therefore, a millionaire could be a good
socialist, he could hardly be the product of a socialist
society.

Since the appearance of millionaires in a
society does not depend on its affluence, sociologists may find
it interesting to try and find out why our societies in Africa
did not, in fact, produce any millionaires--for we certainly had
enough wealth to create a few. I think they would discover that
it was because the organization of traditional African
society--its distribution of the wealth it produced--was such
that there was hardly any room for parasitism. They might also
say, of course, that as a result of this Africa could not
produce a leisured class of landowners, and therefore there was
nobody to produce the works of art or science which capitalist
societies can boast. but works of art and the achievements of
science are products of the intellect--which, like land, is one
of God's gifts to man. And I cannot believe that God is so
careless as to have made the use of one of His gifts depend on
the misuse of another!

Defenders of capitalism claim that the
millionaire's wealth is the just reward for his ability or
enterprise. But this claim is not borne out of the facts. The
wealth of the millionaire depends as little on the enterprise or
abilities of the millionaire himself as the power of a feudal
monarch depended on his own efforts, enterprise, or brain. Both
are users, exploiters, of the abilities and enterprise of other
people. Even when you have an exceptionally intelligent and
hard-working millionaire, the difference between his
intelligence, his enterprise, his hard work, and those of other
members of society, cannot possibly be proportionate to the
difference between their "rewards." There must be
something wrong in a society where one man. however hard-working
or clever he may be, can acquire as great a "reward"
as a thousand of his fellows can acquire them.

Acquisitiveness
for the purpose of gaining power and prestige is unsocialist. In
an acquisitive society wealth tends to corrupt those who possess
it. it tends to breed in them a desire to live more comfortably
than their fellows, to dress better, and in every way to outdo
them. They begin to feel they must climb as far above their
neighbors as they can. the visible contrast between their own
comfort and the comparative discomfort of the rest of society
becomes almost essential to the enjoyment of their wealth, and
this sets off the spiral of personal competition--which is then
anti-social.

Apart from the anti-social effects of
the accumulation of personal wealth, the every desire to
accumulate it must be interpreted as a vote of "no
confidence" in the social system. For when a
society is so organized that it cares about its
individuals, then, provided he is willing to work, no
individual within that society should worry about what
will happen to him tomorrow if he does not hoard wealth
today. Society itself should look after him, or his
widow, or his orphans. This is exactly what traditional
African society in doing. Both the "rich" and
the "poor" individual were completely secure
in African society.

Natural
catastrophe brought famine, but it brought famine to
everybody--"poor" or "rich." Nobody starved, either of
food or of human dignity, because he lacked personal
wealth; he could depend on the wealth possessed by the
community of which he was a member. That was socialism.
That is socialism.

There can be no such
thing as acquisitive socialism, for that would be another
contradiction in terms. Socialism is essentially distributive.
Its concern is to see that those who sow reap a fair share of
what they sow.

The production of wealth, whether by
primitive or modern methods, requires three things. First, land.
God has given us the land, and it is from the land that we get
the raw materials which we reshape to meet our needs. secondly,
tools. We have found by simple experience that tools do help! So
we make the hoe, the axe, or the modern factory or tractor, to
help us to produce wealth--the good we need. And thirdly, human
exertion--or labor. We don't need to read Karl Marx or Adam
Smith to find out that neither the land nor the hoe actually
produces wealth.

And we don't need to take degrees in
Economics to know that neither the worker not the landlord
produces land. land is God's gift to man--it is always there.
but we know, still without degrees in economics, that the axe
and the plough were produced by the laborer. Some of our more
sophisticated friends apparently have to undergo the most
rigorous intellectual training simply in order to discover that
stone axes were produced by that ancient gentleman "Early
Man" to make it easier for him to skin the impala he had
just killed with a club, which he had also made for himself!

In traditional African society everybody was
a worker. there was no other way of earning a living for the
community. Even the Elder, who appeared to be enjoying himself
without doing any work and for whom everybody else appeared to
be working, had, in fact, worked hard all his younger days. The
wealth he now appeared to possess was not his, personally; it
was only "his" as the elder of the group which had
produced it. He was a guardian. the wealth itself gave him
neither power nor prestige. the respect paid to him by the young
was his because he was older than they, and had served his
community longer; and the "poor" Elder enjoyed as much
respect in our community as the "rich" Elder.

When
i say that in traditional African society everybody was a
worker, I do not use the word "worker" simply as
opposed to "employer" but also as opposed to
"loiterer" or "idler." One of the most
socialistic achievements of our society was the sense of
security it gave to its members, and the universal hospitality
on which they could rely. But it is too often forgotten,
nowadays, that the basis of this great socialistic achievement
was this: that it was taken for granted that every member of
society--barring only the children and the infirm--contributed
his fair share of effort towards the production of its
wealth.

Not only was the capitalist, or
the landed exploiter, unknown to traditional African society,
but we did not have that other form of modern parasite--the
loiterer, or idler, who accepts the hospitality of society as
his "right" but gives nothing in return! Capitalistic
exploitation was impossible. Loitering was an unthinkable
disgrace.

Those of us who talk about the
African way of life, and, quite rightly, take a pride in
maintaining the tradition of hospitality which is so
great a part of it, might do well to remember the
Swahili saying: "Mgeni siku mbili; siku ya tatu
mpe jembe"--or, in English, "Treat your
guest as a guest for two days; on the third day give him
a hoe! In actual fact, the guest was likely to ask for
the hoe even before his host had to give him one--for he
knew what was expected of him, and would have been
ashamed to remain idle any longer. Thus, working was
part and parcel, was indeed the very basis and
justification of his socialist achievement of which we
are so justly proud.

There is not such thing as socialism without
work. A society which fails to give its individuals the means to
work, or having given them the means of work, prevents them from
getting a fair share of the products of their own sweat and
toil, needs putting right. Similarly, an individual who can
work--and his provided by society with the means to work-- but
does not do so, is equally wrong. He has no right to expect
anything from society because he contributes nothing to society.

The
other use of the word "worker," in its specialized
sense of "employee" as opposed to
"employer," reflects a capitalistic attitude of mind
which was introduced into Africa with the coming of colonialism
and is totally foreign to our own way of thinking. In the old
days the African had never aspired to the possession of personal
wealth for the purpose of dominating any of his fellows. He had
never had laborers or "factory hands" to do his work
for him.

But then came the foreign
capitalists. they were wealthy. they were powerful. and the
African naturally started wanting to be wealthy too. There is
nothing wrong in our wanting to be wealthy; not is it a bad
thing for us to want to acquire the power which wealth brings
with it. But it most certainly is wrong if we want the wealth
and the power so that we can dominate somebody else.

Unfortunately
there are some of us who have already learned to covet wealth
for that purpose, and who would like to use the methods which
the capitalist uses in acquiring it. That is to say, some of us
would like to use, or exploit, our brothers for the purpose of
building up our own personal power and prestige. this is
completely foreign to us, and it is incompatible with the
socialist society we want to build here.

Our
first step, there fore, must be to re-educate ourselves; to
regain our former attitude of mind. In our traditional African
society we were individuals within a community. We took care of
the community, and the community took care of us. we neither
needed nor wished to exploit our fellow men.

And in rejecting the capitalist
attitude of mind which colonialism brought into Africa,
we must reject also the capitalist methods which go with
it. One of these is the individual ownership of land. To
us in Africa land was always recognized as belonging to
the community. Each individual within our society had a
right to the use of land, because otherwise he could not
earn his living and one cannot have the right to life
without having the right to some means of maintaining
it. But the African's right to land was simply the right
to use it: he had no other right to it, nor did it occur
to him to try and claim one.

The foreigner introduced a completely
different concept, the concept of land as a marketable
commodity. According to this system, a person could claim a
piece of and as his own private property whether he intended to
use it or not. I could take a few square miles of land, call
them "mine,' and then go off to the moon. All I had to do
to gain a living from "my" land was to charge a
rent to the people who wanted to use it. If this piece of land
was in an urban area I had no need to develop it at all; I could
leave it to the fools who were prepared to develop all the other
pieces of land surrounding "my" piece, and in doing
automatically to raise the market value of mine.

Then
I could come down from the moon and demand that these fools pay
me through their noses for the high value of "my"
land; a value which they themselves had created for me while I
was enjoying myself on the moon! Such a system is not only
foreign to us, it is completely wrong. landlords, in a society
which recognizes individual ownership of land, can be, and
usually are, in the same class as the loiterers I was talking
about: the class of parasites.

We must not
allow the growth of parasites here in Tanganyika. The TANU
government must go back to the traditional African custom of
land holding. That is to say, a member of society will be
entitled to a piece of land on condition the he uses it.
Unconditional, or "freehold," ownership of land (which
leads to speculation and parasitism) must be abolished. We must,
as I have said, regain our former attitude of mind--our
traditional African socialism--and apply it to the new societies
we are building today. TANU has pledged itself to make socialism
the basis of its policy in every field. The people of Tanganyika
have given us their mandate to carry out that policy, by
electing a TANU government to lead them. So the government can
be relied upon to introduce only legislation which is in harmony
with socialist principles.

But, as I said at
the beginning, true socialism is an attitude of mind. It is
therefore up to the people of Tanganyika--the peasants, the
wage-earners, the students, the leaders, all of us--to make sure
that this socialist attitude of mind is not lost through the
temptations to personal gain (or to the abuse of positions of
authority) which may come our way as individuals, or through the
temptation to look on the good of the whole community as of
secondary importance to the interests of our own particular
group.

Just as the leader, in our former
society, was respected for his age and his service to the
community, so, in our modern society, this respect for age and
service will be preserved. And in the same way as the
"rich" elder's apparent wealth was really only held by
him in trust for his people, so, today, the apparent extra
wealth which certain positions of leadership may bring to the
individuals who fill them, can be theirs only in so far as it is
necessary aid to the carrying out of their duties. It is a
"tool" entrusted to them for the benefit of the people
they serve. it is not "theirs" personally; and they
may not use any part of it as a means of accumulating more for
their own benefit, nor as an "insurance" against the
day when they no longer hold the same positions. That would be
to betray the people who entrusted it to them. If they serve the
community while they can, the community must look after them
when they are no longer able to do so.

In
tribal society, the individuals or the families within a tribe
were 'rich" or "poor' according to whether the whole
tribe was rich or poor. If the tribe prospered, all the members
of the tribe shared in its prosperity. Tanganyika, today, is a
poor country. The standard of living of the masses of our people
is shamefully low. But if every man and woman in the country
takes up the challenge and works to the limit of his or her
ability for the good of the whole society, Tanganyika will
prosper; and that prosperity will be shared by all her people.

But
it must be shared. The true socialist may not exploit his
fellows. so that if the members of any group within our society
are going to argue that, because they happen to be contributing
more to the national income than some other groups, they must
therefore take for themselves a greater share of the profits of
their own industry than they actually need; and if they insist
on this in spite of the fact that it would mean reducing their
group's contribution to the general income and thus slowing down
the rate at which the whole community can benefit, then that
group is exploiting (or trying to exploit) its fellow human
beings. It is displaying a capitalistic attitude of mind.

There
are bound to be certain groups which, by virtue of the
"market value" of their particular industry's
products, will contribute more to the nation's income than
others. But the others may actually be producing goods or
services which are of equal, or greater, intrinsic value
although they do not happen to command such a high artificial
value. for example, the food produced by the peasant farmer is
of greater social value than the diamonds mined at Mwadui. But
the mine-workers of Mwadui could claim quite correctly, that
their labor was yielding greater financial profits to the
community than that of the farmers. If, however, they went on to
demand that they should therefore be given most of that extra
profit for themselves, and that no share of it should be spent
on helping the farmers, they would be potential capitalists!

This
is exactly where the attitude of mind comes in. It is one of the
purposes of Trade unions to ensure for the workers a fair share
of the profits of their labor. but a "fair" share must
be fair in relation to the whole society. If it is a greater
than the country can afford without having to penalize some
other section of society, then it is not a fair share. Trade
Union leaders and their followers, as long as they are true
socialists, will not need to be coerced by the government into
keeping their demands within the limits imposed by the needs of
society as a whole. Only if there are potential capitalists
amongst them will the socialist government have to step in and
prevent them from putting their capitalist ideas into practice!

As
with groups, so with individuals. There are certain skills,
certain qualifications, which, for good reasons, command a
higher rate of salary for their possessors than others. But,
here again, the true socialist will demand only that return for
his skilled work which he knows to be a fair one in proportion
to the wealth or poverty of the whole society to which he
belongs. He will not, unless he is a would-be capitalist attempt
to blackmail the community by demanding a salary equal to that
paid to his counterpart in some far wealthier society.

European
socialism was born of the Agrarian Revolution and the Industrial
Revolution which followed it. The former created the
"landed" and the "landless" classes in
society; the latter produced the modern capitalist and the
industrial proletariat.

These two revolutions
planted the seeds of conflict within society, and not only was
European socialism born of that conflict, but its apostles
sanctified the conflict itself into a philosophy. Civil war was
no longer looked upon as something evil, or something
unfortunate, but as something good and necessary. As prayer is
to Christianity or to Islam, so civil war (which they call
"class war") is to the European version of
socialism--a means inseparable from the end. Each becomes the
basis of a whole way of life. The European socialist cannot
think of his socialism without its father--capitalism!

Brought
up in tribal socialism, I must say, I find this contradiction
quite intolerable. it give capitalism a philosophical status
which capitalism neither claims nor deserves. For it virtually
says "Without capitalism, and the conflict which capitalism
creates within society, there can be no socialism!" This
glorification of capitalism by the doctrinaire European
socialists, I repeat, I find intolerable.

African
socialism, on the to her hand, did not have the
"benefit" of the Agrarian Revolution or the Industrial
Revolution. it did not start from the existence of conflicting
"classes" in society. Indeed I doubt if the equivalent
for the word "class" exists in any indigenous African
language; for language describes the ideas of those who speak
it, and the idea of "class" or "caste" was
nonexistent in African society.

The
foundation, and the objective, of African socialism is the
extended family. The true African socialist does not look
on one class of men as his brethren and another as his natural
enemies. He does not form an alliance with the
"brethren" for the extermination of the
"non-brethren." He rather regards all men as his
brethren--as members of his ever extending family. that is why
the first article of TANU's creed is "Binadamu wote ni
ndugu zangu, na Afrika ni moja." If this had been
originally put in English, it could have been "I believe in
Human Brotherhood and the Unity of Africa."

"Ujamaa,"
then, or "familyhood," describes our socialism. It is
opposed to capitalism, which seeks to build a happy society on
the basis of the exploitation of man by man; and it is equally
opposed to doctrinaire socialism which seeks to build its happy
society on a philosophy of inevitable conflict between man and
man.

We, in Africa, have no more need of being
"converted" to socialism than we have of being
"taught" democracy. Both are rooted in our own
past--in the traditional society which produced us. Modern
African socialism can draw from its traditional heritage the
recognition of "society" as an extension of the basic
family unit. But it can no longer confine the idea of the social
family within the limits of the tribe, nor, indeed, of the
nation. For no true African socialist can look at a line drawn
on a map and say, "The people on this side of that line are
my brothers, but those who happen to live on the other side of
it can have no claim on me." Every individual on this
continent is his brother.

It was in the
struggle to break the grip of colonialism that we leaned the
need for unity. We came to recognize that the same socialist
attitude of mind which, in the tribal days, gave to every
individual the security that comes of belonging to a widely
extended family, must be preserved within the still wider
society of the nation. But we should not stop there. our
recognition of the family to which, we all belong must be
extended yet further--beyond the tribe, the community, the
nation, or even the continent--to embrace the whole society of
mankind. this is the only logical conclusion for true socialism.

Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy."

Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly

Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King's birthday ended up becoming a national holiday ("The Last Holiday because America can't afford to have another national holiday"), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. Gil uses Lennon's violent end as a brilliant parallel to Dr King's assassination and as a biting commentary on the constraints that sometimes lead to newspapers getting things wrong. —Jamie Byng,Guardian / Gil_reads_"Deadline" (audio) / Gil Scott-Heron
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